


Or Are You Ashamed To Show Good Men The Monster You've Become

by Lilymoncat



Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Altmer Hero of Kvatch, Angst, Broken Heart, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Love Confessions, Madness, Possibly Unrequited Love, Sheogorath's less then stable mind, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Unhappy Ending, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, Warning: Sheogorath, broken hero, semi-ambiguous sex for the Hero, there is no happy ending for them, uses he/him pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 23:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12544140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilymoncat/pseuds/Lilymoncat
Summary: Sheogorath knows and does not know why he does what he does.





	Or Are You Ashamed To Show Good Men The Monster You've Become

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason, I felt like stomping on my heart and writing this. Really, really stomping on my own heart. Just goes to show what I like at times.

Sheogorath rarely knows why he does things.

It is his nature. He is Mad. He was created that way, torn screaming from the Deeper Dark and shoved into Jyggalag’s head without so much as a by-your-leave. Rather rude, like those people who rifle through pockets looking for coins to steal. They rifle his pockets, they’re lucky if they just end up with carrots for fingers. Some of them get their hands bit off by sudden Pocket Monsters. Not that Jyggalag had been any happier with the arrangement. Really, managing to scoogle his way out of Jyggalag’s head was for the better of both of them. And he’d gotten the joy of putting his boot in Mister Boring Order’s ass and making it clear that the Shivering Isles were HIS. His to shape, to change with his ever wandering mind.

He rarely knows why he does what he does, but this he does not know why he does at all.

He does not and does know the date. The words are not important, names for days and months have changed before and will change again. Mehrunes Dagon is right in that one thing, the otherwise dense fool. Change is often, violent, bloody, and generally only appreciated by the few loud fanatics that think they know what is best for all. Some rare times, rare as when his mind is clear and stable and Not-Him, they are right. Far more often they are not. But he knows the right amount of time has passed again, and so he is mostly here. There is a small part of him breaking the mind of some fool who thought they could pull a fast one on him, another that is doing the fishstick, and a third piece is taking tea with dear head chopping Pelly, but the rest of him is in this Here-and-Now. He does not wear his preferred guise, but this form is His now as well. Bare golden feet stand on stone, skin cold pebbles under torn armor and ragged clothes. Delicate, calloused fingers are red/gold with his own blood/ichor from where he has dug them into his own flesh. Pointed ears twitch periodically, hearing things that are and aren’t there. Tangled hair falls in his eyes as he paces up the length of the chapel.

He will find himself here every year/cycle/right-length-of-time, in this form, no matter what he might wish.

He stops at a mark that the small part of him that is Not-Him knows and falls to his knees. Shivering, he looks up. Words his and Not-His fall from his lips, a frantic confession of things he can and can’t remember. That small part, that Not-Him begs forgiveness, absolution for what he has become, begs for words, a sign, anything-damn-your-eyes-anything-that-proves-you-are-still-here-with-me. His hands reach up for the stone maw, ignoring the agony as his skin burns and blacks from power that is the opposite side of the spectrum from his kind. He can almost touch the stone that was once flame-and-power, and mortal flesh before that, but not quite. He screams, words at first that just devolve into wretched, sobbing sounds as the Snow Elves did into the Falmer.

His mind can handle Madness, for Madness he was made, but not this. Not this.

_(He remembers calm, steady eyes. Warm hands, warm heart. Once wildness tamed and given wisdom. His heart given wholly and gladly to the Last Septim. Nights of talk, of hope for the future. Torn away, as the weave between Mundus and Oblivion was. Torn away in the breaking of the Amulet and the offering of Royal Flesh and Blood and Bone. Locked in eternal stone, leaving him bereft and alone. Deeper then flesh, then blood or bone, bleeding in the soul. Screaming, why is he screaming. They said he tried to claw his own eyes out at first, in his soul-wounded state. What he has done to himself is unforgivable, but if he can not have a mortal life with him, then he will walk in his lost self the corridors of eternity, until time’s end and they are all butchered so that new thems may arise.)_

“Please, Akatosh(Martin), First of the Nine, please say something, anything…”

Madness Sheogorath knows well, but the grief that is as deep as the Champion of Cyrodiil’s madness may yet be what truly destroys him.


End file.
